


saw you in the lampglow, you fade

by kimaracretak



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Ambiguous Deaths, F/F, Female Friendship, Ghosts, Regrets, Space Horror, on mourning and missing and the space between the two, sentient babylon 5 of the vaguely chthonic horror sort, there's a mostly hopeful ending though, this is sad i am sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 18:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5059732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talia comes back, or maybe she doesn't</p>
            </blockquote>





	saw you in the lampglow, you fade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Muccamukk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/gifts).



> internetkisses to catherine for beta-ing this and preventing me from colosally fucking up the ending

Lyta leaves, and Talia leaves, and the station grows smaller. Delenn can feel the change in the thin recycled air, and even that seems to have a new life of its own these days: there's breezes where there shouldn't be, some hard purposeful wind unfurling itself through corridors and ventilation shafts. _It wasn't supposed to be like this._

She stands outside Kosh's door, rests her head against the cold metal and lets the tangled black hair she's still getting used to fall into her eyes. _You promised. It wasn't supposed to be like this._ But she can't quite bring herself to confront him.

The station's preparing for something. Delenn only hopes it knows what it's doing better than Kosh did.

 

*

 

The first time Susan sees Talia in her mirror she thinks she's dreaming. Punches the wall and only realises she's cruelly awake when the blood blooms bright across her knuckles. _You're not here,_ she thinks, and then aloud, "you're not here," like maybe saying it aloud would make it real. Would give her a chance to be proved wrong.

In the mirror, Talia smiles sadly. Her eyes are still bright, there, alive and shining and reflecting the person behind them. The person who died under the brush of Lyta's mind, surrendered all claim to her body and self like she had never existed. Maybe she never had.

Susan shuts her eyes, clenches her fists and grits her teeth as split skin aches. "You're not her," she says, and wonders which Talia she's speaking to. The one in the mirror? The one who called herself Control? The one who she -- who she had thought she -- had loved?

When she finally opens her eyes, her reflection is alone. Only then does she turn around, grab her jacket and pull on her boots. She could have turned around before, proved there was nothing but the spare emptiness of her quarters behind her. But she hadn't. How did it take so little time for her to land in a place where she preferred the possibility that she was hallucinating to the reality that Talia was gone for good?

 

*

 

Delenn walks, late in the artificial nights observed by fewer and fewer of the station's personnel and almost none of its less savoury inhabitants. She gets lost, finds maps lit up in sections with no other functioning computers. She listens to the soles of her boots click along uneven metal rivets, to the secret songs Babylon 5 hums to itself in the darkened corners where most flesh-and-blood creatures know better than to walk.

She had thought, once, that she knew many things. Back when she was an acolyte, filled with pride and knowledge and hope, walking temple corridors on the arms of her best friends.

Delenn still hopes, these days, still believes that they'll make it through the wars to come. But Talia is gone and Lyta in hiding, Shadows creeping along the Rim and Earth spiraling into violent isolation. Everything in view fractures, crystalline: her breath in the chill, the station's whispers in the walls.

Hoping isn't expecting. She presses her hands flat against the cold thin barriers separating her from the vacuum and tries to convince herself that the station's voices don't sound like Talia, at all.

 

*

 

Susan only runs at night, these days. Ties sneakers on too tight and pounds her way through deserted corridors lit only occasionally by proper lights. Tries not to think too hard about the other sorts of illumination, sickly greens and blues and reds swirling across unfinished walls.

The hallways sprawl in front of her, hairpin turns and gentle slopes. She looks at station maps, sometimes, and can never quite figure out where she ran the night before. Babylon 5 has its own paths it wants her to run.

It's okay, though, these half-desperate nighttime flights through too-narrow corridors that can't possibly fit into any station schematics that she's ever seen. There aren't any mirrors below Down Below. Nowhere for Talia-Not-Talia to show up.

Susan runs and runs with the sound of her breathing harsh in her ears and doesn't admit to herself that she misses the apparitions. She has enough ghosts to mourn following her footsteps these days.

 

*

 

Delenn walks, and Susan runs, and very little on the station is where it is supposed to be. Old grudges and old wars heat the skies of unnamed planets outside, and inside grief and loss settle with cold comfort into new bodies, new homes.

More than electricity flows through Babylon 5's conduits now. They both should have known the station was leading them somewhere, but when Susan trips on a loose metal sheet and lands against a warm body instead of a wall, they're both surprised.

"Delenn," Susan says, when they've both regained their footing. She brushes damp hair out of her eyes with the hand the other woman doesn't still have a grip on. "Sorry, I -- there's not usually anyone else around down here, especially now."

"It's all right," Delenn replies softly, and her eyes are more unreadable than usual. "I will not ask what you're doing here. But you can walk with me, if you would like."

Susan shuts her eyes, breathes in and out. _If you would like_. It reminds her of the early days of her friendship with Talia, all carefully modulated conditionals and unvoiced desires. She opens her eyes, and Talia is leaning against a Babcom unit on the other side of the corridor. Had it always been there?

Talia inclines her head down the corridor. _Go,_ she seems to be saying, but go where? With Delenn, or without? Delenn is looking at her too, calm and undemanding and a little bit hopeful. What the hell. Delenn's not one for useless small talk, and if she's walking around nameless sections of the station at nearly three in the morning she probably has ghosts of her own to forget. "Sure."

Delenn doesn't quite smile, but her grip on Susan's hand tightens just a little. Talia, though, smiles for real. 

 

*

 

They don't speak about it, after, but they meet again and again and soon their meetings fall into a pattern. The darkness isn't any less oppressive with another person to share it, and the station still shifts around them, but it feels -- different. More purposeful. The whispers through the bulkheads grow louder, and anticipation strings itself tight and hot in Delenn's chest.

"I think," Susan says one night, the first time since the first that either of them have spoken during their walks, and Delenn nearly misses a corner and walks straight into a wall, "I think, sometimes, she's still here."

She. _Talia_. Delenn swallows hard. "It is often like that, when those we ... care about leave us unexpectedly." She hesitates over the words, reluctant to define the extent of Susan's relationship for her, but the silence around them is broken by a buzzing, flickering light whispering  _love_.

"Not like this," Susan says softly. Her eyes are fixed on the shadows shifting in the pale, broken light. Delenn thinks about all the things that could be hiding there, which ones Susan thinks she sees. "There's so many things I didn't tell her and ... and sometimes I think she's come back to hear them."

She could be describing a dream, or a fantasy, or some combination of the two, but Delenn thinks of the voices of the station, of the sort of nights that demand nothing but truths, and believes. So all she says is: "I know."

Susan interlaces their fingers, shifts closer, doesn't meet her eyes. Something flashes black and gold at the end of the corridor. Not quite human. Not quite there.

The station's hum shifts in pitch as Delenn slowly, carefully leans her head against Susan's shoulder. They're not alone.

For once, the thought is a comfort. 

**Author's Note:**

> you had so many lovely treat prompts that i almost feel bad this ended up so firmly on the "trick" side of things, but i was absolutely caught by the cruel, wonderful ambiguity of _Talia comes back, or maybe she doesn't?_ melded with the idea of Talia as a ghost and/or trapped in a computer and regrets. i hope you enjoy  <3


End file.
